Q&A: Toronto’s faltering prosperity report card

Toronto slipped four spots to eighth in the Toronto Board of Trade’s annual report card that measures prosperity among 24 leading cities around the world. While still boasting high marks among indicators that make Toronto a desirable place to live, the region is marked by a “mediocre economic performance” and “crippling congestion.” In an effort to learn something from our neighbours, the scorecard took a closer look at Boston, a city comparable in size in Toronto that continues to excel. The Post’s Natalie Alcoba chatted with Board of Trade president Carol Wilding about some of the findings.

Q What does Boston do better than Toronto?

Wilding In Boston, they’ve taken a regional approach to economic development so they’ve been able to build more on regional strengths, which is something we haven’t done. We believe here that government and business need to work on that together. Boston does have a strong post-secondary education cluster, so they’ve taken that and with the capital that they have, they’ve shaped that into a more knowledge-based economy. This was a path that they started down 10, 15 years ago, and that really has proven to be a success for Boston.

Q We seem to be doing something right on the labour attractiveness front.

Wilding Absolutely. That is a point of pride for Toronto. We do get high marks in a number of areas. In immigrant populations, we’re number one of all 24 global cities; we do well on education in terms of people with bachelors degrees; housing affordability, on a relative scale; our water usage we’re doing well; our teacher-to-student ratio, these are all areas where our labour attractiveness and our liveability is extremely attractive to people wanting to come and to work and to raise their families here. But we know that we continue to be plagued, particularly by the commute times, that drags us down. It’s a continuing persistent issue for us. We just aren’t building enough infrastructure, or investing enough dollars in infrastructure.

Q Are we any closer to understanding why our commute times are so brutal in Toronto?

Wilding We did a deeper dive in the transportation lens and we looked at the 11 indicators and commute times are obviously a key one, because we continue to stay in last place. But we did look at some of the other areas, whether it’s around transit ridership or the kilometres that are traveled by rail. We’re not doing fantastic there. Conversely, though, we do well at kilometres traveled by bus. This all starts to tell more of a story of what’s contributing to the commute times. We also looked at the public transit expenditures. And clearly, we’re 15th out of 21, so we’re not investing. We’re not investing enough dollars, we don’t have enough rail, we don’t have the best utilization of what we do have, there’s a lot of work to be done there.

Q Are there any quick fixes on the transportation front?

Wilding On transportation infrastructure, it is not a quick fix. It’s a long game and you have to be in it for the long time. We have seen investment provincially. At a minimum we have to stay the course or potentially increase funding, but we can’t be trading off against health care or education or the deficit. They have to be balanced. The cities that have done it consistently are the ones that are getting ahead of us. This is a critical issue for us, and you can’t catch up that quickly.

Q What do you hope this report card will achieve?

Wilding The key reason for our report card is to be a catalyst for change. If we measure ourselves, and we know how well we’re doing, where we need to make improvements or where we need to make policy changes to pursue a more globally competitive region, then the scorecard will have done its job.